Awards Night

every year at the end of the festival the awards night acknowledges the best entries of 2009. i saw a lot of films this year, and maybe 2 of them were worth recommending, and for sure those two films were bought and are being prepped for wide release. the awards night took place in the Racquet Club venue. its amazing how the place is just tennis courts transformed into an elegant closing event.

Celebrities

honestly, celebrities are no big deal to me anymore. the entire week of the festival park city was littered with well-known individuals and bands. i had a few good moments with the celebs, didnt get pictures of all of them, but i’ll at least tell you about em (if you believe it or not)

Frickin Music Cafe

Sundance has a venue on lower Main St. called Music Cafe. they have a lot of free concerts there and is a great place for the public to check out, that is when it’s set up. Music Cafe is a stupid tent that is so damn hard to set up. as a matter of fact, the crew who was supposed to set it up bailed on sundance the night before the festival was about to start. the production team is at the prod house after a long day at work, i think it was 8am – 8pm. jesse schaefer, my boss, gets a call at 10:30pm from john stevens, jesse’s boss, saying that we need to corral all the prod team down at lower main to help set up Music Cafe. we were out there in i think 22 degree weather until 2am. it was cold, there was confusion everywhere since the people who knew how to set things up took off, and it was just a nightmare. in the end we got it all taken care. our whole production team stayed away from that damn place all festival.

when we first arrived, seeing what mess we had to get into.

it was the sketchiest way how they put up these tents. that pole they are setting up is just a piece of wood used to prop the tent up to its full height. that thing was bucklin and almost snapped. we definitely let the other workers who stuck around do that one.

putting up the walls..

Robert Redford

i was lucky enough to be stationed at The Egyptian on press day, the day before the festival officially opens. this is the day where there are certain press screenings  so the media can get a head start on attracting people to the festival. on press day Robert Redford has an opening festival press conference, talking about the festival and where things will be for him and his assets in the future. all i have is picture now, but did record a little of the press conference.

Sundance Venues

Sundance has many different theaters used for the festival, 14 venues i think is the number. being part of the production department, i work with all the different theater managers in order to provide whatever they may need to operate at 100%. it has to be one of the best departments of the festival to work in because we aren’t limited to one venue, like volunteers and theater managers are. here’s some pictures i snapped of a few theaters that were part of this festival:

Production House And Beyond

i havent been able to update this because i’ve been so busy. a lot of people say they are busy and they really arent, but this time i for sure have been busy. it’s pretty amazing how they retrofit this small town into a huge film festival. so far my days have been super long, working 12 hour days and beyond at times. two days ago we worked 8am-8pm then got called back into main street to set up the big tents for a venue called Music Cafe because the workers who were originally supposed to set it up flaked. then yesterday it was 8am-10:30pm. today it was 8am-6pm and have to travel to Salt Lake City at 11pm tonight to load out the opening night gala. but anyway..

this picture above shows some of the vehicles we have to work with. currently we have nine vehicles in our fleet. too bad im the only one not allowed to drive because im not covered under the insurance (21+).

Sundance – first 4 days

i just finished up the third day of my stay here at sundance, sitting in the car heading back to Salt Lake City from Park City, and am starting to get the hang of it. more about that soon, but first i should give you a little background about how i got here. 

freshman year of college i participated in a three-day seminar with the Mill Valley Film Festival’s Youth Critic’s Jury. we basically covered a little of all the different aspects of film. and most of the people that spoke were pretty important people. i know for sure i met Andrew Stanton, Find Nemo creator; even got to hold his Oscar or whatever he won. after the three days of fun, i was one of the six chosen to be on the Youth Critic’s Jury. we screened a load of films, 200 seems to be a number in mind but i highly doubt we had that many. over the course of two days we chose our favorites and those chosen were shown to the public. it was a great experience. ever since then i’ve been volunteering with the festival, working in various positions, from ticket-takers to box office ticket-givers. it was fun, would get to see a lot of cool movies and meet a lot of famous people.

last year i signed up again as a volunteer, but was kind of getting tired of doing the same stuff over and over again. in a small little push, i decided to try and see if i could do more. the volunteer coordinator, Lauren, was really cool and basically said to her that if you needed anything special done then let me know, because the basic volunteer work was too repetitive for me. in short, by the end of the festival i moved away from being a volunteer and more towards being part of staff – knowing most theater managers and staff members. i was even invited to a bar in sausalito with the staff after the closing night party out on the hornblower. was pretty sweet. kinda just shows that with a little drive and determination, most things are fairly possible.